Part 14

“Then Nehemiah asked him in a trembling voice (for horror of the devil was upon them all) how dared he serve the Evil One for the sake of a few dollars this month and that, thus imperilling his own immortal soul for ever. But Patsy answered that the White Country was cold and barren, and fuller of men than our beach of grains of sand. He said that the lands, such as they were, belonged only to a few, and those who possessed none must needs seek a living where they could, or die of hunger in the road. All this was borne out by Tomasi, who himself had seen old white chieftainesses begging for food in the White Country, and little children perishing unrelieved. Patsy said that when a man was wanted to do a thing for hire, a hundred offered themselves only to be turned away, so great was the misery of the White Country, so mean the hearts of those who were rich. Whereupon, said Patsy, he had been glad to take the devil’s money and do the devil’s work, for other choice there was none.

“Then said Letonu, my father, ‘Patsy, thou must leave the devil and cease to do his bidding; and though we have no hundred dollars, we can give thee, here in Aunu’u, everything else the heart of man desires: _taro_, breadfruit, yams, pigs, _valo_, squid, and chickens, wild doves in their season, and good fish for every day of the year; and I will take thee to be my son, to live with me in my fine house and share with me everything I possess.’

“But Patsy only shook his head, and the rope, seemingly terrified lest it were about to lose him, began to click convulsively and without ceasing. Patsy kept hearkening to it while he listened also to my father, which he did with a divided face, like one hearing two voices at once. He said he thanked my father very much for his kindness, but the fact was, he liked the devil, who was now to him almost a member of his own family, and unfailing with the money, one hundred dollars this month and that. Then Nehemiah made another speech, full of piety and warning, and thereupon finding that nothing could turn Patsy’s rock-like heart, he rose slowly to his feet and led the party out of doors. There a new discussion took place, the pastor proposing to kill Patsy that night and burn down his house; my father resisting him and saying that he would permit no harm to come to his friend the white man, whether he belonged to the devil or not.

“I don’t know how it was, but from the day of that meeting Patsy began greatly to love my father, and half his time he spent in our house and near him, so that the neighbours marvelled about it and were crazed with envy. He gave my father a black coat to wear on Sundays, and cartridges for his gun, and nightly they took lessons together in our language, Letonu teaching him to say our words, while Patsy wrote them down on a sheet of paper. Nehemiah preached against us in the church, and would have stopped my father’s communion ticket, but Letonu said he would shoot him, if he did, with both barrels of his gun.

“One day my sister Java returned from Savalalo, where she had been living in the family of my uncle. She was a girl beautiful to look at, and so tall and graceful that there was not a young man in the village but whose heart burned at the sight of her. Of them all Patsy alone seemed not to care; and in the evenings, when his devil work was done and he would romp with us on the mats or talk with my father about foreign countries, he never had as much as a glance for my sister; while she, on her side, treated him always with disdain, and often kept away from the house when she knew him to be there. I think Patsy must somehow have found this out, for one night he told us that he would never come back again, as Java hated him; and he kissed us all, and departed sorrowfully into the darkness. After that, when he was not busy in the devil-house, he took long walks into the bush with his gun, or sat solitary on his verandah, reading a book; at night he sang no more, nor danced hornpipes, but read and read with a sad face, like a person who mourned a relation.

“We were angry with Java for having driven Patsy away, and told her to go back to Savalalo and let us have our darling; but she seemed not to care for what we said, and only answered that she hoped never to see the devil’s white man again. My father, who loved Patsy, was greatly vexed with her, though he said little at first, thinking that our friend would soon return and that Java would grow ashamed. But when day after day passed and he stayed away continually, my father talked to Java with severity, and bade her go down to the devil-house and ask Patsy’s pardon for her wickedness. She was very loath to obey, and only went at last when Letonu threatened to send her lashed like a pig to a pole, and pretended to call his young men together for that purpose. I was told to go with her, for thou knowest our custom forbidding a young girl to go anywhere alone, lest people should talk and take away her reputation. But I felt sorry for Patsy as I walked behind my sister down the path to his house, for she carried herself defiantly, and there were tears of anger in her beautiful eyes.

“We found Patsy sitting, as usual, in the devil-house, the great rope tail clicking at his elbow with messages from hell; and though he sprang up smiling when Java opened the door, I thought his face looked sad and changed. She bade me stay outside, and as she seated herself in Patsy’s chair and began to explain the errand on which she had come, I could see that her lips were trembling. For a long time I heard them talking in low voices, and then, growing weary of waiting, I fell asleep on the warm door-step. I do not know how long I slept, but when I at last awoke I could still hear the unceasing murmur of their voices inside the room, sweet and soft, as of pigeons cooing in the mountains. I turned the knob of the door and went in; and there, to my astonishment, I beheld my sister in Patsy’s arms, her head buried in his breast, her hands clasped thus about his neck, while he was talking foolishly like a mother to her nursing child. At the sight of me they sprang apart, laughing loudly like children at play; and when I asked Java if she had given her message, they both laughed more than ever and caught each other’s hands.

“On our return, Java asked me to say nothing of what I had seen; and told me, in answer to my questions, that Patsy had been secretly breaking his heart for her, though she had never known it; and that she, no less, had been delirious for the love of him. She said, too, that he was the most beautiful man in the world, and wise and good above all others, and that her love for him was so great that it almost choked her. When I spoke doubtfully of the devil, she said that was all a _pepelo_, a joke of Patsy’s; that the rope was what she called a _telenafo_, which ran under the sea from one country to another, telling the news of each. She said that Patsy had explained everything to her, and had even shown her the little pots of thunder and lightning with which the _telenafo_ was controlled.

“It was not long after this that Patsy and Java were married by the pastor Nehemiah, my father giving them a wedding feast the like of which had never before been seen in Aunu’u, so innumerable were the pigs, so gorgeous the fine mats and offerings. Java went to live in the inland house, and wore a gold ring on her finger and new dresses every day. Patsy gave her another sewing-machine in the place of the old one, and a present of two chests for her clothes; and every day she ate sardines and salt beef like a white person. At first she was pleased with everything, and her face was always smiling with her happiness; but as days grew on she began to tire of the white way,--which, as thou knowest, Siosi, is relentless and unchanging,--and of the work, which is continual. A daughter of a chief lives easily in Rakahanga, and little is expected of her, for there are girls to wait on her and men to do the heavy labour. Java grew sad in her elegant house, and cared less and less to paint the stove with blacking and wash greasy dishes all day, while the village maids were sporting in the lagoon or fishing by torch-light on the reef. She opened her distressed heart to Patsy, and old Ta’a was called in, at a monthly wage of three dollars, to carry the burden of these unending tasks. But old Ta’a was a busybody and a thief, and the lies she said with her tongue were worse to be endured than even the loss of kerosene and rice which took place continually. Every day something was taken, and when Patsy wondered and complained, the old one said the fault was Java’s for giving to her family like a delirious person. Were I to get a biscuit, the old one changed it into six; and were Letonu to beg a little tea and sugar for his cough, it became transformed in the telling into many basket-loads. On the other side, Ta’a slowly embittered Java’s mind against her husband, telling her that the marriage was no true marriage, and that when Patsy saw a prettier face he would not scruple to cast her off. So the old woman stayed on and thrived, like a fat maggot in a breadfruit, while Java cried in secret and Patsy grew daily more downcast and silent.

“At last the storm burst which had so long been gathering, and the little house that had been so joyful now shook with the sound of quarrelling voices. Java took her golden ring and threw it on the floor, and with it her golden comb, her much-prized ear-rings, and the brooch which in years gone by had belonged to Patsy’s mother in the White Country; she stripped off her dress, her shoes and stockings, even the ribbon from her long black hair; and then, half naked, she returned to our father’s house.

“Letonu was, of course, much concerned, and went down immediately to see Patsy in order to make things smooth again. But the white man was sullen and proud, and would talk of nothing, except that Java could do as she pleased, and that it was the same to him whether she stayed or went. My father, who had been a handsome man in his youth and knew the ways of women, urged Patsy a thousand times to make it up quickly with his wife, telling him to put his arms round her and kiss her and all would be well. ‘Thou mayest know much about the _telenafo_, and how to keep thunder and lightning in pots,’ said my wise father, ‘but assuredly, Patsy, thou art ignorant of the hearts of women.’ He told him that Java was already repentant and ashamed, and, like a person on the top of a high wall, a push would send her either way. But Patsy, like a little sulky child, sat in his chair and refused to speak, while Ta’a rattled the dishes and laughed sideways to herself. It was sad, when my father returned, to see the look that Java gave him. Her hot fit was already past, and her face was full of longing and sorrow; and on his saying that nothing could be accomplished, she lay down on a mat, and remained there all day like a sick person. She lay thus for nearly a week; and if we asked her anything, she would only groan and turn away her head. She was waiting for her man to come to her; but to him there was no such intention; for he stayed shut up in the devil-house, or wandered uselessly in the bush by himself.

“At last she got up, more dead than living, so thin she was and changed; and calling for food, she ate with the voracity of a starving person; and then she bathed, and did her hair with flowers, and put on the poor clothes she had worn as a maid. ‘Behold,’ she said, ‘I am now one of the _aualuma_ and no longer married.’ And from that day she who had been the most circumspect girl in the village, and the best behaved, became swiftly a run-wild-in-the-bush, going everywhere unattended, and sitting up with the young men at night, so that people called her a _paumotu_, and her communion ticket was withdrawn.

“Patsy never lacked for news of her down-going, for old Ta’a still kept house for him; and no tale was ever told of Java but the old one brought it to him, and more also, conceived by her lying heart. Patsy never tried to see his wife or to do anything to bring about peace between them; and if he passed her in the path he would turn away his head, even if it were night, and she alone with another man. Once, only, he showed that he still remembered her at all, at a time when she was possessed of a devil and like to die; then he came to our house, and felt her hands, and gave her medicines from a little box, and told my father to do this and that. And when she grew better and able to sit up, he sent us salt beef and sardines for her well-being.

“Now it happened there belonged to Ta’a’s family a girl named Sina, a thin, hungry piece with a canoe-nose like a white man’s, and a face so unsightly that it resembled a pig’s; and if she went anywhere the children would cry after her, ‘Pig-face, Pig-face!’ like that, so that her name of Sina was forgotten, and even members of her family called her unmindfully by the other. Compared to Java, who was tall and beautiful like a daughter of chiefs, this little Sina was no more than a half-grown child; and when she was stripped for bathing, behold, you could count the ribs of her body. But Ta’a brought her every day to Patsy’s house, so that by degrees he became accustomed to the sight of her; and all the time the old one kept telling him that the little Pig-face loved him--which, perhaps, indeed was true, for none of our young men ever looked twice her way, except to laugh, and she might have stayed out all night and no one would have thought to speak against her character. Patsy was kind and gentle to her, as he was to every one save poor Java; and the little Pig-face followed him like a dog, and lay at his feet at night, while he read and read on his front verandah. So slavish was her soul that she would have kissed his feet if he had kicked her, and nothing pleased her so much as to sit beside him when he slept and keep the flies from off his face. In the end, of course, there happened that which Ta’a had long been planning: Patsy took the little Pig-face to live with him, and pacified her father with two kegs of beef and fifteen silver dollars.

“When the news reached Java she was consumed with a frightful anger, and spoke wildly and murderously, like a drunken white man, clinching her fists and kicking with her legs. She set to sharpening a knife upon a stone, and we saw that she meant to cut off the little Pig-face’s nose; for, as thou knowest, Siosi, such is our custom here when one woman wrongs another. She called together all the old ladies of the family, and they took counsel with one another in a secret place, arranging between them a scheme for Sina’s capture. But the little Pig-face was cowardly beyond anything ever before known; she bathed not, neither did she wash nor walk about, but lay all day, trembling and noisome, at Patsy’s feet. Once, indeed, she was nearly caught, when upward of a month had passed and she had grown careless in her watching. In the middle of the night the house was set on fire, and as the two rushed out in confusion, Sina was seized in the arms of a dozen women. Had it not been for the darkness, which made seeing difficult, her canoe-nose would have been swiftly lost to her; but for light they had need to drag her to the burning house, she screaming the while like a hundred pigs. Patsy knew instantly what was happening, and began to fire his pistol in the air as he ran to his partner’s help, giving no thought at all to his perishing house. It was well for the little Pig-face that he did so, for the knife had already sunk below the skin, and a twist would have left her noseless.

“As for the house, it burned and burned until nothing was left of it, though the most of what it held was carried out in safety. The next morning Patsy moved everything down to the devil-house, making of it a fort, with a high fence of wire all round, full of barbs and points for the lacerating of flesh. And the little Pig-face, with her nose tied up in cloths, ran this way and that, helping him with nails, while Java and I lay in a hiding-place and counted her ribs.

“Thou wouldst have thought that Java might now have rested in her anger, for Patsy’s house was consumed and her rival had felt the sharp edge of her knife. But there was no appeasing Java’s heart; and wicked though she was herself, and misconducted, she still could not endure to be supplanted by another. My father spoke to her with severity, saying that she had done all that our custom demanded, and that there must now be peace and forgetting. But the blood came hotly into her face, and she answered not a word, nor made the least sign to obey Letonu’s words. Then I saw with a certainty that the war with Sina, far from being finished, was only just beginning; and my body quivered all over with the fear of what was to come.

“For a long time, however, Java did nothing, and went about as usual, seeming to take no further thought. The old women of the family returned to their ordinary occupations, and no longer lay banded in places where Sina might pass. It would have mattered nothing if they had, for the little Pig-face stuck to her house like a barnacle to a rock; and except on Sundays, when she went to church between Patsy and Ta’a, we never saw the least hair of her head. But Java knew of means more potent than knives for the undoing of a worthless person, and she sought out Malesa, the old wizard of Aleipata, to whom one went ordinarily for love-philters and medicines. For a dollar he gave Java a curse on a sheet of paper, and told her to nail it to the church door on the following Sunday. This she did, to the great indignation of Nehemiah and the elders, though to no purpose so far as concerned the little Pig-face, who happened that day and all the Sundays after to keep away from church, like a heathen in the Black Islands. For what worth is a curse if thy enemy reads it not, nor goest even near the door on which it is placed? Is it not like firing a bullet in the air, hurting nothing?

“So Java returned again to Malesa the wizard, and, for lack of better gifts, she carried with her the sewing-machine she had possessed before her marriage. But the old man said he must have more, and spoke like one delirious, of a hundred dollars and a boat; and when she cried out, he laid his skinny hand on her shoulder and looked a long time into her eyes, and then turned the wheel of the sewing-machine to show that it was broken. But Java’s heart was stronger than a man’s and full of hatred; so instead of shrinking back, as most women would have done, she told him boldly to name some other price, thinking, perhaps, to give a finger, as Fetuao had done when her husband was perishing with the measles.

“‘Thy long, curly hair,’ said Tingelau, slowly, ‘and I will make of it a head-dress for my son.’

“‘I will give thee that and more, also,’ said Java, with the tears in her eyes, for there was to her nothing so beautiful as her hair.

“Then, behold, a strange thing happened, for as she knelt before the wizard and undid the knot of her hair, letting it tumble over her bosom like a cascade, the old man touched it not with the scissors in his hand, no, not even cutting so much as a single hair.

“‘Java,’ he said, ‘thou art too beautiful to mar. Some other girl must provide a head-dress for my son, and thou shalt return perfect as thou camest; though I shall retain the sewing-machine for my pains, and from time to time, without fail, thou shalt give me a silver dollar until five be reached. And for this small, insignificant reward I shall prepare thee a curse the like of which no wizard ever made before--a curse which beside the other shall be as a man to a child, so that the whole world shall tremble and the dead turn in their graves.’

“Accordingly, in three days my sister returned to Aleipata, where old Malesa, faithful to his word, handed her the curse he had been so assiduously preparing. Ah, Siosi, the reading of it was enough to make one’s blood run cold, and palsy the hand that held the written sheet. The little Pig-face was cursed outside and inside, in this world and the next world, part by part, so that nothing was forgotten, even to the lobes of her ears and the joints of her toes. There was nothing of her but what was to be scorched with fire, torn away with pincers, scratched, pierced, and destroyed with pointed sticks; lo, she would scream for death while the sharks fought for her dismembering flesh and squid sucked out her eyes, no one being at hand to give her the least assistance. Java smiled as she read the curse aloud, and took counsel with Tu, the brave and handsome, who had agreed to nail it to Patsy’s door.

“It was black night when Tu made the attempt, holding the paper in his mouth like a dog as he climbed the scratching wall of wire. At every moment Java and I expected to hear the explosion of a gun or some sudden sound of awakening from within the devil-house; yet nothing reached our ears but the beating of our own anxious hearts. After a long while we heard Tu whispering in the darkness beside us, and our first thought was that he had failed. But we were wrong, for Tu had succeeded in every way, and that with the utmost secrecy and skill. Then we went and lay behind a big bush about a hundred fathoms inland of the house, so that we might see with advantage what was to happen in the morning; and Java and I petted Tu, and talked to him sweetly, for he had a brave heart, and his handsome body was everywhere torn with the points of wire.

“_Panga!_ Siosi, never was a dawn so slow to come as the one we then waited for, nor any so bitter and chill. Our teeth clicked in our heads, and though we lay closer together than a babe to its nursing mother, or soldiers to one another in the bush, we nearly died with the cold, like people in the White Country. When at last the sun rose in a haze like that of blood and smoke commingled, we felt, indeed, that the curse was already at work; for the air turned sultry beyond all believing, so that we breathed suffocatingly, and endured the taste of matches in our throats and mouths. Tu said prayers--very good prayers and long, which he had learned in the missionary college before he had been expelled; all of them about the beauty of holiness and well-doing. But Java attended to none of these things, nor seemed to care whether we ourselves lived or died, for her eyes were ever on Patsy’s house.

“Patsy himself was the first to come out, leaving the door open behind him, so that the curse was unluckily hidden from his view. He had clubs in his hands, which he twirled in the air as his manner was every morning for the strengthening of his arms. After a few movements he called out to the little Pig-face, saying, ‘Sina, Sina,’ like that. ‘Come out to thy work, thou idle one.’ Thereupon she too appeared, rubbing her eyes, and in her hands were two clubs like those of Patsy’s. But instead of leaving open the door, as her partner had done, she closed it with a push of her hand, and lo, the curse shone white upon it like a splash of lime on a dark cloth. At the sight of it she shrieked to Patsy, and together, side by side, they read what was there written, clinging to each other with fainting hearts.